69 Ways To Build Backlinks (kinda huge)

GASP! It’s been a while since I last did this huge list thing, hope I still got the Kidblogger in me. I’m getting old!

But this was rather late to say the least. I was supposed to post this the other week but got loads of stuff got in the way. Still, I’m quite happy to finish writing this BIG article so I hope you like it.

ALERT! Disclaimers below…

First disclaimer, some ideas just happen to pop out my head so you might find them a bit “rad”.

Second disclaimer, some tactics are so bad ass and effective, people “just happen” to not like them ;-)

Third disclaimer, I’m not gonna talk about submitting to web directories, press releases and all those rehashed stuff. I’m not saying that they don’t work, I’m saying that it has talked about a lot of times before.

Other than that, I’m pretty sure you’ll like it…

Do The Link Bait

To bloggers, this is a household name. To others, it might sound weird. So…

What the heck is link baiting anyway?

Tons of people tried to explain link baiting in long articles that go on and on. I’ll be frank, I can’t read long articles that don’t talk about big trucks, some mighty cool weird facts and chicks.

So let’s keep it simple – link baiting is simply “something” (article, tool, picture, anything) that make people want to link to you.

Here are some goodies you can do…

1. Make a list – No need to explain, examples will tell ya: 50 most important people on the web, 100 best movie lines, 69 ways to build backlinks ;-)

2. Perform studies – There’s a stats junkie inside of almost every people – wanting to know every new website linking to you, conversion rates of certain colors, how people look at a webpage and all sorts of stuff. But hey, it’s solid content and damn interesting.

3. Make graphs that are hard to understand – Just something that might help you with #2 up there. Can’t help myself to include this. OCD? Nah… complicated = good (at some point). Ok seriously though, when you perform studies, presentation matters. Churn out spiffy graphs that’ll help you explain what you found out.

4. Expose a scammer – Works all the time. Heck, anything with the word “expose” in it will be a link magnet! (hint: controversy) But be careful, you have to back up yourself on this one. You need SOLID proof.

5. Quizzes and tests – “Mark completed the quiz ‘Are You Awesome?’ with the result AWESOME!.” Sounds familiar? Yep, Facebook! And it’s popping every minute! Why do you think the IQ test industry is so big?

6. Show off – $100,000 Adsense check, $40,000/month via blogging – what do they have in common? They Flaunt, they show off BUT how do they get away with it? (this one is stolen from NLP) They portray the “reluctant hero” story line – “I’m just an ordinary guy, I don’t want this attention, but people keep asking me so…”

Try Google’s Web 2.0 Favorites

The idea is simple, you make these “midget blogs”, slap an article on it with a link back to your site, publish it and forget about it.

You can do this by using your own domain, hosting them in different IP’s and stuff BUT that would need some upfront cash. So instead of buying hundreds of domains and paying a monthly bill on hosting, you can slap those articles on these free “midget blog” sites.

8. Hubpages– Cool site and sweet community. You might need a better article though because before they do-follow your links, they’ll look at your article first and they’ll decide if it’s worth do-following your links.

10. Bloggersbase– This one is pretty sweet. They understand that you’re there for promoting your own blog so it’s ok for them to put an author info at the end of your article.

11. Ever – Weirdest.Photo.Ever.com, Sexiest.Blonde.Ever.com, Best.Guns.Ever.com – cool sister site of Squidoo.com. The idea is simple, when you get to the site they have a drop down of adjectives you can choose from – that’ll be the first word in your domain and the second or third is up to you.

12. Webs – Please bear with me though if I cry while typing stuff about Webs (formely FreeWebs, it’s just that this is one of the site I was used to when I first started, it’s so memorable to me *cry cry* :-)

OK, seriously, I like the easy interface. They do post a wide AdSense ad on top of the page though, but other than that, you’ll like it.

13. Devhub– Here’s a new player in the field, one account, tons of sites, referral program and automatic monitization + cash out at $5, so you make money while building links too, sweet!

14. Tumblr– Tumblr blogs are for vanity and just for pure social networking so when you post stuff here, appear natural. Write like you’re talking to your close friend. You might want to add some nonesense pictures too, BIG ++ in appearing natural ;-)

15. Xanga – My dad used to use this waay back when I was 10, posting pictures and stuff – multiply-ish type of site.

20. Nexo – Another multiply-ish type of site, kinda hard to get it because it has the “For family and friends” site feeling.

21. Rateitall– This one’s pretty unique – you can make a post and let others rate it OR you can be the one who rates stuff. They’ve also filled the site with tons of quizes.

(WARNING – powerful hint: interlinking.)

Social Bookmarking

22. Digg – Weird stuff, odd pictures and tech – that makes it my favorite social bookmarking site :-) OK, aside from being my favorite, Digg has a very slick interface.

23. Slashdot – “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.” Very very strict moderators. Mainly because, the site is PR 9 since way back then. So I suggest post “real” cool stuff that the slashdot community would be interested in.

Don’t Be Shy – Upload Videos

If you can’t stop talking, better grab a camera and record it, another easy way to get a backlink.

For camera shy’s out there, you can always make use of camtasia or powerpoint, way easier. It doesn’t have to be totally cool, it just have to be good enough to get accepted on these sites (and of course, to show to the public :-D):

31. Dailymotion – Just upload any of your own video and get a link in the profile page – that easy.

33. Viddler– Slick interfae, and unlike the two above, you get a link on EACH video you submit!

Giveaway YOUR Docs

After slapping your articles on those “midget blog” sites, you can submit it as documents on these sites and still get away with a link. You can also submit a free report you already have, no duplicate content issue.

Ordinary Persons Too Have A Voice – Petition

Social Networking Profiles

I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of social networking profiles out there that doesn’t have the no-follow tag in the links on your profiles, but these are some quick finds:

41. Friendster – Friendster has been on the platue recently probably due to the tons of bugs the site have, still worth creating a profile there though.

42. Gather – Social networking site where you can create a blog that links to your site ;-)

Flattery

Most of these stuff take advantage of human nature, it’s almost as close as pointing a gun at their head asking them to link to your site, OK not really but these stuff works pretty good.

43. Rank and rate them – Definitely “tickles” human nature. Rank people in your niche using any weird ranking factors, but works best with trusted 3rd party sources. Check out the top 100 make money online blogs and the Youngest Bloggers (WARNING: Self promotion, self promotion!)

44. Interviews – Wow, very old, very saturated tactic that STILL works. Heck, I bet it will always do – it’s a win-win. The interviewer gets good content, the interviewee LINK gets good exposure.

45. Awards – Another human nature tickler. Simple idea really – you award people in your niche for something. For example, the most absurd blogging blog (OK, that’s not a good example, heh), the blog design, the best writing style. Then, give out a plaque, or in the online world, a badge or a small spiffy graphic to post on their blog.

Use One Of The Most Potent Weapons Of Influence – Reciprocity

GASP! Human nature stuff here again.

Has someone ever helped you and asked for nothing in return? Then when he needs something, whatever it is, you feel obliged to help? That’s human nature talking to you.

You feel obliged to reciprocate. So that is what we’re going to take advantage here, we’ll make them feel obliged to link to us.

46. Testimonials – A very saturated tactic here too that still works. Can get you a link from a very authoritative site and has a big chance to drive you loads of traffic.

47. Sponsor, donate – There are some blogs there that has an Amazon Wishlist or a “buy me a drink” donating buttons. Most of lists down all the people who have donated in some way. Maybe via blogroll or via a post, permanent link right there.

Fresh and funky

50. Ask for the link – “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” – Matthew 7:7

Money doesn’t come to you, you come and get it (although in some cases, after you’ve made lots of it, they happen to come to you) it’s the same for backlinks, you come and get it – email bloggers that you’ve made an awesome post (hint!) that’s worth sharing to their readers. Of course, you wouldn’t want to do this for each of your post.

54. Throw a contest – This got a bit saturated in the “make money” market because of the massive links contest hosts get before, but still works. Tip: to make this work, make it a lot easier for people to join. For example, twittering, copy pasting a small blurb of text to their blog, Stumbling the post, etc.

55. Hotscripts – You a programmer dude? Make a simple script and give it away. You’ll get a link back from the BIG hotscripts directory PLUS, you can request a link back from the people who will use your script.

57. Make an article about Digg – Diggers REALLY dig posts about digg. Seriosly, very easy to take advantage of that. Remember the chick who made a song about Digg LINK? Works.

58. Blog about twitter – Hey, what the heck, Twitter is ON FIRE, it’s hot. Think about it, almost every Twitter app out there gets its time on the spot light at least once.

59. Eye catching design – This technique works best on design blogs (or other related topics). The idea is, make a great, unique design and get featured on design blogs like Smashing Magazine and CSS galeries.

5-minute changes

Actually, I’m pretty sure the stuff below won’t even take 5 minutes to set up. The reward is great and turnkey. I recommend doing the two…

60. Domain canonicalization – The name is the only one scary, this is just an easy fix. I made an article about domian canonicalization before.

61. Take advantage of scrapers – They are damn pesky but not “that” smart. They grab content from your blogs through your RSS feed – they grab the whole post INCLUDING links. So if you’re linking back to your blog in that post, they’ll link to that too. Of course you can’t always link back to your blog in every post, that would be weird. Here’s a plugin that’ll help you LINK.

Covert tactics

If you can’t finish the whole article, just finish this part, you’ll like it.

62. Post at .gov and .edu forums – One of my personal favorites. Totally whitehat and doesn’t require you to “think” at all. No kidding. Here’s a post I did back at 2007 on how to find .edu and .gov backlinks.

63. SELL your WordPress theme – Giving away WordPress themes with footer linking back to your site is old, still works, but old. What if you sell them? You get the link AND the cash. Besides, selling your WordPress theme instead of giving it away pumps up its perceive value. You also give better support because there’s less people to handle. (hint, hint)

64. Give FREE graphics and icons – I’m a big fan of slick icons and buttons and I bet you are too (if you’re not, you probably haven’t seen a good one yet!)

65. Referrer spam – I did an article about referrer spamming awhile back. Sneaky I tell you, but will definitely MAUL your reputation if you’re promoting a legit site. Your host should also be ready to get complaints because this is blatant spamming. On the bright side, this works well on made for affiliates/adsense sites ;-)

66. Create a web directory then “make them” link back to you – I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with web directories wherein you submit your site and they include it in their directory for a link back or for an upfront payment. Now instead of requesting them to link back to your directory, how about requesting a link back to your site? Shotgun but turnkey.

67. Buy an old domain – Buy and old domain, install WordPress on it and slap an article with your link. Easy. Old domains are more authoritative than new ones… well because they’re old – so they give more link juice. Tip: Buying old domains that has a good name is expensive, very. So I suggest getting something that’s just in the middle.

68. Huge do-follow list – Spend 30 minutes a day on commenting on do follow blogs and you’re in for some quality targeted backlinks. Catch? Takes a lot of time. You have to read the blog post, spark some conversation and “appear” natural. Other than that, definitely worth the try – 1400 Do-Follow Blog List.

69. Pattern interrupt – Another one stolen from NLP (btw, I’m NOT an NLP “guru”, I’m not even close to one, I just happen to know some of their “tricks”) pattern interupt, do something your niche is doing the other way around. Quick example is instead of selling ebooks, sell take home study courses, CD’s or DVD’s.

Be creative

There are literally hundreds of link building tactics out there, and I bet thousands of undiscovered stuff.

It’s pure creativity.

Discovering new “midget blog” sites and new human nature “ticklers” are all forms of creativity (or a day sitting infront of my laptop ;-)

This Methods Work. I have used some of them on one of my official Blogs and moved my Alexa Rank from #800,000 + to #192,177. Also Don’t forget to include your name in the said posts and articles, If you are proud of the stuff you write so as to get back links then its like killing two birds with one stone:

1. You will get back Links and
2. you will brand yourself

When you brand yourself people gain more trust in you and as you know, the more people trust you, the more money they Spend on you!

@Mike Ndegwa – Agreed – on some instances though. For example when you create those “midget blogs”, you don’t want EVERY article to be named after you, especially if it’s written by a different person – different voice, it would ruin your credibility.

@carl Yea I agree to some level you need to use your Name and other times an Alias. Especially when using a “2nd Voice” you want it to appear natural and not self promoting.
I would also encourage using multiple accounts, where necessary.

Also would encourage patience and plan on the side of Entrepreneurs. SEOis not for the faint hearted

Hey Carl!
Thanks for this awesome list!
Bookmarked it and will be using it to start making links to my domains.
Im only getting into internet marketing now and still have much to learn!
Thanks for all your posts!
Keep it real:)

Thanks for sharing these information and links to what might have been helping you in your web presence. I really need these sites and learn how to effectively use them. Thanks so much for sharing them!

Great Post. I think this topic about building back links is
one of the most frustrating things to do for new internet
marketers.

All anyone has to do is understand that this takes time to
do, and not expect too much right from the start, and over
time they will start to receive massive traffic from the
search engines by getting some great quality back links
to their site.

Another excellent example of pure link bait. The list you created is amazing and being an experianced internet marketer I was surprised that I opened as many diffrent windows as I did. Usually when reading lists about link building I laugh and close them after reading the top 5. Your list is legit one of the best I have seen thank you.

Thanks again for this list. I thought it was going to be one of those post that i’ve repeat over-used tricks but it wasn’t. I got more new things that i’ve never heard or seen. Thanks agian for such a helpful post.

It will certainly help me get my site noticed more and give me some more exposure. A lot of useful blogging tips some of them I can’t use like the programming one’s but I can see them working extremely well for some people.

I have to say, lots of your ways I haven’t used. I have already bookmarked this post, I will try some of them, hope they will boost my traffic.
By the way, I use your ultimate blogging theme to set up my blog. I love it.
Can I ask you one question? Every time when I open my dashboard, why it shows a message from webpage, saying “out of memory at line: 589”? And I need to click the button “ok” then it is Ok. This didn’t happen before. Would you mind letting me know why? Should I update or something?

Great article kid. Yeah kinda over did it on the length here but hey, the information was relevant and made sense. I gurantee that if you apply at least 10-15 of these methods you will dramatically increase the traffic going to your site.

Incredible list, although it seems like a lot of hard work to do, but getting high quality dofollow links on your site/blog is really a tough thing to do alone and in most cases I think this will cost you some.

This is one of the best business building blog posts I have ever read! I am going to be in touch with an outsourcer on Odesk very soon to get some of these links for myself! This is absolutely brilliant! Incredible job Carl!

This is superb dude! Unlike the articles on eHow or Problogger.net, this is more informative, and sensible, and easy to understand too… Well done again Carl! I’ll keep reading you blog! (Man I can’t believe this fellow countryman of mine is so informative.)

Hi Carl, thanks for sharing this. I will try all the things you brought up here. Indeed you posted a ton of sites to build backlink from. In fact building backlinks is a lot of hardwork to do on my part but hopefully in the end, I will reap some rewards. Who knows! :).

I found lots of ideas/links from your list. Will do several of them in the days to come. I’ve also read a lot of lists, but I found plenty of new things here. Thanks…. and more power to you, even if you’re already super successful.

Have just read this 69 ways and it really a great tip for bloggers. Hello Carl, this tips would help me a lot and I looking forward to write a content for your site. I just make my idea organized this time. I hope I am not late in commenting this post here.

In addition to what you have said, Advertising your site to sell links is very bad and you could easily be banned. If you sell links, dont display them on the front page. Also, dont gather links very fast. I lost 3 sites easily because within 2 months of setting up the ste, i acquired over 2000 links. Google banned the sites. if you buy old domains which i think is the best, you can gather links very fast.Mind you, it also depends on the age of the domain. For domain over 5yrs, the sky is your limit. 1, 2 yrs be careful. Hope this help someone

Very informative post. Clear and easy to understand, but also has lots of new stuff that hasn’t been posted before. Also got to check out other useful stuff on your site. This is exactly the kind of content which will get you noticed. Bookmarked and repped!

I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to make backlinks in comments, forums, etc. only to find their no follow or don’t work. I really appreciate your list of new ideas. Hey, I guess you just proved your point about the list thing.

Another useful list. How about updating the list on the social networking profile like Friendster?I wonder if anyone still uses that since its like a gaming site already. Anyhow, thanks for the useful tips I can use to achieve my goals with my site! More power!

Here’s something I do for backlinks: Become a part of a forum in your niche and offer to help people. Example: You have a Photoshop blog, go on photoshop forums. Make useful posts, and don’t forget to put your website link in your signature. Every once in a while you’ll come across someone asking how to do something you’ve already written about. Tell them, “Hey I already wrote an article about that here….” give them the link.

Building links that help serps of our sites in a positive way is really getting hard because Google wants quality link, not quantity. Anyway, this post is a relief for me as I had lost my way of building links after the Google penguin update. I realize many of the ways you mentioned can be used for sheer traffic if not SEO benefits!

P.S. Loved the post, especially the “Fresh & Funky” section since everything in it was new to me. Thanks!!

You have said it all in my own case when i hosted my site i used social networks like facebook and twitter to get more traffic but in terms of building backlink commenting in blogs works best for me if you can be able to find blog with Dofollow

I have one question, if Carl or someone else reading this wants (or knows) to answer me. I read this post and I see few tips for getting a link from a site which is not in your niche. I’ve red elsewhere that it’s best to get a link from a site in your niche. But what if it’s not in your niche. What is the difference in value? Has someone managed to measure this somehow? I know it’s hard to measure it, but, you know, some kind of comparison.

I have one question, if Carl or someone else reading this wants (or knows) to answer me. I read this post and I see few tips for getting a link from a site which is not in your niche. I’ve red elsewhere that it’s best to get a link from a site in your niche. But what if it’s not in your niche. What is the difference in value? Has someone managed to measure this somehow? I know it’s hard to measure it, but, you know, some

Hey one more thing, as some one else also said this, This is really important to have quality links, 1 quality link is better than several useless links, so this is also a very important point to keep in mind while building links.

If you go down this route, it would take you a very long time and plenty of resources to increase your page ranking. What do you think of using SEO tools that will help boost ranking but pollute the web with garbage?